Summer Games (37 page)

She stared, frozen, hardly able to believe that what she saw wasn’t one more cruel dream she would awaken from alone.

But this couldn’t be a dream. Cord was standing not twenty feet away from her, city slacks and no tie, white shirt open at the throat, his slate-gray suitcoat tossed carelessly over his shoulder. He looked thinner, drawn hard and tight, and the sprinkling of silver in his forelock had become a solid slash against his black hair.

The helicopter took off in a whirl of dust and noise. When it was gone, there was only silence and sunlight and Cord standing there, looking at Raine with eyes the color of ice.

Then he started walking toward her, and she saw the cane in his right hand.

She ran to him, forgetting her anger and pain and questions, forgetting everything except him. She threw her arms around him, unable to say anything more than his name. He held her with a strength that made her ache, his left arm a steel bar across her back, his right arm braced on the cane.

Then he kissed her as though she was fire and he was a man chilled all the way to his soul.

Before the kiss ended, she knew that it didn’t matter if he had hurt her by leaving her without warning, without even a word. It didn’t matter that he was a man perfectly suited for the dangerous life he had chosen. It didn’t matter that his world could include her for only a few days, a few hours, a single kiss. It didn’t matter that he was the wrong man for her.

She loved him. There could be no going back from that simple overwhelming fact.

“That answers one of my questions,” he said almost roughly.

“Which one?” Her fingers roved over his face and hair, reassuring herself that he was real.

“If you missed me as much as I missed you.” She laughed brokenly. Tears blurred her vision. Impatiently she wiped away the tears, not wanting to miss a single instant of looking at Cord.

“I missed you more,” she said.

“That isn’t possible.”

She looked at his ice-blue eyes, saw shadows of longing and pain. “Where were—”

Abruptly she remembered. She didn’t have the security clearance to know the details of his life. He’s here now. Let yesterday and tomorrow go. Love him now, while you can.

“Come to the cabin,” she said huskily, and with every word she kissed him, butterfly touches that were as breathless as her voice.

He wanted to stay there, holding her, kissing her, letting her sink all the way into his cold soul. But he couldn’t ignore the demands of his body any longer. Even with the cane, his damned leg was threatening to buckle under him. The doctor had been right; it was too soon for him to be wedged into airplanes, helicopters, or cars.

Cord didn’t care. He needed to see Raine.

Slowly, touching him lightly, she walked beside him. She could see that his leg bothered him. Words ached in her throat, all the questions she wanted to ask. She ignored them.

She opened the cabin door and waited for him to climb the few steps up onto the porch. She wanted to help him but knew that he wouldn’t want to be helped.

“You look like you’ve missed a few meals.” She kept her voice light, though it required an effort of will that made her nails bite into her palms.

“Food was lousy.”

Raine shut the door behind Cord and watched as he crossed the room. He settled on the bed by the fireplace, propping up his leg in obvious relief. Despite his injury, he still radiated the power and grace that had haunted her dreams.

Yet he watched her as though uncertain of what to say, what to do.

And he was. The need to see her had driven him from the hospital before they wanted him to go. But now that he was here, all he could remember was the fact that she hadn’t come to him. Not once in five long weeks. All he had had of her was the enigmatic gold coin and her words, equally enigmatic. Give it to him. He needs it more than I do.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? Sleepy?” she asked. They were the only questions she would permit herself to say aloud. “I don’t know which time zone you’ve been in, so I don’t know what you need.”

“You.” He held out his hand to her. “I need you.”

In a few quick strides Raine crossed the room and lay down on the bed beside Cord. He held her gently at first, kissing away the tears that fell no matter how hard she willed them not to. Then his kiss changed, hungry and searching, possessing her with a power that drove every emotion out of her but the yearning for him that had made her nights a torment and her days a nightmare.

“I’ve dreamed of this for thirty-nine days,” he said. He tasted her with tiny bites and licks, his hunger tangible in the hard lines and deep tremors of his body. “Even when they knocked me out, I dreamed of you.”

Closing her eyes, she shivered beneath the sensual assault. Blindly she sought the warmth and hard male flesh beneath his shirt. The cloth kept getting in the way. With quick, almost savage motions she unbuttoned the shirt. She needed the naked resilience of his flesh against her palms the way a starving man needs food. Fingers spread wide, she rubbed her hands slowly across Cord’s chest, savoring the physical reality of the man she had never expected to see again outside her dreams.

As he watched her expression, his pale eyes narrowed with raw hunger. Her face was taut yet strangely languid. Her lips smiled even as they parted and lifted, wanting his kiss. His hands kneaded down her back, pushing her close to the hard ache of his arousal.

Her hips shifted. She fitted herself against him intimately, perfectly. Need clawed through him until he groaned. His hands pushed beneath her sweater. He pulled the soft jade knit off her in a swift motion. There was nothing underneath but the smooth, fragrant skin that had haunted him since the first time he had touched her.

“I’ve dreamed of this, too,” he said, his voice as hard as his need.

He bent over her breasts, feeding on them with violent restraint, nipping at their peaks until she trembled and cried out softly.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, hearing his name repeated again and again. “I dreamed of that, too. I’d wake up yelling for you and the doctors would knock me out again. But I could still hear you crying for me, and it nearly killed me because I couldn’t go to you, couldn’t do anything but listen to you cry.”

She thought his words were a lover’s sweet lies. Yet it reassured her to know that he hadn’t left her easily, that he had missed her to the point of pain. The way she had missed him, pain in her very soul.

He heard her moan, felt her body tremble in response, and he stopped thinking at all. He had to be inside her now, to know that she was his again. His arms tightened as he began to roll over onto her. Then he froze, chained for an instant by the white-hot agony in his leg. He hissed a curse through his clenched teeth.

“Let me,” she whispered.

Gently she pushed him onto his back. She got off the bed long enough to strip away her own clothes. The hungry, smoky blaze of his eyes watching her made her knees weak. She knelt on the bed and pulled his shirt free of his body. While her hands worked over his slacks, she slowly, neatly licked the midnight line of hair that descended to his lean waist and below.

His breath hissed again, but it was a lightning stroke of pleasure rather than pain. Her mouth was hot, possessive, and it promised him things he hadn’t dared to dream.

“I love the way you taste,” she said dreamily.

“Come here, sweet rider. Let me give you what you’ve been asking for.”

Smiling like a cat, she turned her back on him and went to work on his shoes.

His fingertips traced the elegant length of her spine from nape to buttocks.

She shivered and his shoes dropped to the floor.

His hand slid lower, tracing the smooth shadow cleft until he found the hidden fire.

She sipped at breath, made a broken sound as desire shook her. Her fingers clenched on his socks, but she didn’t even know it. His touch was sweet agony. She forgot what she was doing, forgot even to breathe; she lived only in the heated darkness where he touched her.

Cord made a sound deep in his throat as he felt the hot, silky rain of her response. “I dreamed of this, too. It was cold, everything was cold, winter coming down and fire calling to me, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even scream. And I wanted to. I wanted to tear down all the castle walls, grind them to dust. But there were straps cinching me to a bed as white and cold as snow, winter freezing me. So I dreamed of you, of fire bathing me.”

Shuddering, helpless, she surrendered to the passion coursing through her, liquid heat like heartbeats swelling until she moaned. His voice caressed her, midnight and velvet, asking for her fire, telling her how the silky pulses pleasured him. She swayed, shaken by passion, and he smiled, watching his dream.

“I’ll never get you undressed,” she managed finally. The words were as ragged as her breathing. “I want to see you, to touch you, to feel all of you naked against me. Inside me.”

With a reluctance that nearly undid her all over again, he released her soft, slick flesh. Her hands were trembling as she pushed his slacks down. She felt clumsy next to the masculine power of his legs. Then her hand brushed a new knot of scar tissue on his thigh, and she froze.

“Go on,” he said. “It’s all right.”

He helped her ease the pants past the recent wound. When she saw the raw slash of barely healed flesh, she went pale.

“My God. What happened?” she asked starkly.

“Later.” He twisted out of his remaining clothes with a speed that mocked even the idea of injury. “It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as wanting you does.”

He rolled toward her, but she saw the instant of hesitation as his wounded leg rebelled. She wanted him, but not at the cost of the pain she had seen on his face for one terrible instant.

“Does it bother you when you lie on your back?” she asked.

Cord smiled crookedly. “Come to me, sweet rider.”

But despite the smile, his voice and hands were urgent as he lifted her onto him.

Raine settled over him lightly, completely, moving slowly until he groaned with pleasure and stark need. She shuddered deep inside her body and saw by the narrowing of his eyes that he had felt it. His smile was utterly male, as was the sudden tightening of his body as he took complete possession of her fire.

With an open, hungry mouth, she kissed his lips, his neck, his chest, consuming him with teeth and tongue as he had once consumed her, spreading fire wherever she touched him. His breathing shifted, quickened, like his flesh inside her. She deepened her caresses as shivering forerunners of ecstasy rippled through her.

He encouraged her with dark words and sensual hands gripping her, stroking with an intimacy that burned. Her hips moved slowly, rhythmically, riding him until his eyes were smoky, all but closed, his body tight with anticipation and need.

She didn’t hear the whimpers that came with each of her breaths. She didn’t know that her mouth on his was as demanding as her rhythm was slow. She felt nothing but him as their bodies fused together, flesh on flesh, tongue on tongue, heat swelling, ecstasy raking until they surrendered to it, consuming and renewing each other in the same endless, pulsing fire.

Boneless, utterly spent, Raine lay across Cord’s chest and tried to remember how to breathe. It was a long time before she stirred and lifted her head enough to look at him.

He read her satisfaction in her dazed eyes and slow, very female smile. Relief uncurled inside him.

“That answers my second question,” he said quietly. “It’s as good for you as it is for me. Which leaves only one question. Why didn’t you come to me?”

She blinked. “Come to you? How? Where?”

“In the hospital. The same way the good-luck piece did. You did send it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“And you said, ‘Give it to him, he needs it more than I do.’ ”

“Yes, but—” Her words ended in a harsh sound of frustration. “How could I come to you? I didn’t know where you were!”

His eyes narrowed. “Then how did you know I was dying and needed all the luck I could get to pull through?”

She went pale and flinched as though he had struck her. All her worst fears congealed in her soul, crushing her—ice and violence and raw scar tissue scored across the body of the man she loved. He hadn’t been telling a lover’s sweet fiction about missing her. He had been describing a brutal truth. He had awakened yelling for her and the doctors had knocked him out again and strapped him to the bed.

Her body shook repeatedly, helplessly. She had come so close to losing Cord and never even knowing that he had died. He had called for her, needed her, and she hadn’t been there for him.

The thought was agony to her, a pain greater than any she had known before. Lightly, blindly, her trembling fingertips traced his features while tears slid down her cheeks. She tried to tell him how much she loved him, that she would have moved heaven and earth to be with him if she had known; but no words could get past the tears filling her throat.

He caught her tears with his lips, kissing her again and again. “You didn’t know, did you?” he asked.

Numbly, she shook her head.

“Then why did you send back the good-luck piece?” His voice was coaxing, gentle. He kissed her tenderly, stealing each tear as it fell.

She shuddered as the rest of the truth congealed in her soul; Cord wasn’t hers, not really. He belonged to tomorrow, and sooner or later, tomorrow always came. The reality of it was a dry, cold wind that froze her tears.

“The coin wasn’t mine to keep, any more than you were.” Her voice was flat, lifeless.

He sensed Raine retreating from him, from any emotion at all, shutting down before his eyes, a castle with all gates closing, all bars being drawn. Fear echoed through him, returning as anger. His hands were suddenly hard around her face.

“What are you saying?” he demanded.

“You’ll come and go as you always did. No warning, no words, nothing.”

“I hadn’t planned on getting shot.”

She flinched and slid off him before he could protest. Very gently, her hand sought the new scar. “A bullet?”

“Yes.”

“Will you . . . heal?” she asked, remembering his pain.